There isn’t any reason to go out to the theater this weekend, right? Sure, Avengers: Age of Ultron is out and it’s going to be a huge hit and you’ll probably see it, but why make the trek out this weekend with the full theaters, obnoxious theatergoers and risks of being sold out? We all know Age of Ultron will still be around in a few weeks—and, hey, maybe you can use a free pass to see it then instead. Besides, there are plenty of great movies and television shows you can watch this weekend from the comfort of your own home. Check out the newest films to hit Netflix, Fandor and other streaming services below!

Netflix

Bluebird (Lance Edmands, 2013)

Set in a quiet, dreary Maine logging town, Bluebird is about the effects of a tragic event on a community. The film stars Chicago stage actress Amy Morton (who you probably recognize as the mom from Rookie of the Year) as a school bus driver whose possible negligence leads to the death of a young child. Like the film in whole, she gives an understated and powerful performance. First-time filmmaker Lance Edmands, who has worked primarily as an editor, shows an uncanny emotional maturity by never going for over-the-top moments, instead letting the melancholy environment and characters set the film’s tone. The cast is rounded out by an excellent cast, including John Slattery, Margo Martindale and Adam Driver. We saw Bluebird during its limited release earlier this year and thought it found “the right balance between atmospheric undertones and understated storytelling”. It is basically the perfect counter-programming to the big scale loud action film everyone else will be watching this weekend.

Other titles new to Netflix this week:
Chef’s Table (Series)
Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001)
National Treasure (Jon Turteltaub, 2004)
Watchers of the Sky (Edet Belzberg, 2014)

Amazon Prime

Fifty Shades of Grey (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015)

Or perhaps instead of venturing out to the theater to see the biggest film of you year, you can catch up with the first big hit of the year. Perhaps you were interested (or should I say “curious?”) to see this steamy adaptation of E.L. James’s veiled Twilight fanfic, but were terrified to see if with, you know, other people around. Well, now you have the chance buy Fifty Shades of Grey on Amazon Prime before it comes to DVD and Blu-ray. They also have an “unrated versions” available – it’s three minutes longer than the theatrical version, so I bet those are three really sexy minutes. In all seriousness, Amazon Prime and Video On-Demand have began offering some films for purchase before they are released on DVD or can be seen elsewhere. This could be an exciting venture for the ever-growing reach of streaming services.

Other titles new to Amazon Prime this week:
Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986)
Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife (Scott Foley, 2014)
The Professional (Luc Besson, 1994)
Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999)

Fandor

8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)

This week’s collection on Fandor highlights the great Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni with some of his most famous films and best performances. Included is perhaps his best work with his closest collaborator, Federico Fellini. 8 1/2 is among the wildest, funniest and most complicated films ever made about filmmaking. Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a celebrated film director who struggles through his latest project while escaping into his crazy, sexy fantasies. It is probably the most Fellini film made by Fellini, highlighting his best dramatic and most bawdy elements. The film wouldn’t work without Mastroianni, though – watching his particular sense of cool being upended is fantastically enjoyable. Featuring iconic scene after iconic scene, all with Fellini’s creative world and character building, 8 1/2 is rightly considered one of cinema’s all time greats. But remember: as with all Fandor collection films, it is only available until the following Sunday!

Other titles new to Fandor this week:
Divorce Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961)
The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (Joshua Oppenheimer, 1998)
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)
Tokyo Playboy Club (Yôsuke Okuda, 2011)

Video On-Demand

Paddington (Paul King, 2014)

The most surprisingly enjoyable children’s film since 2011’s adaptation of Winnie the Pooh, Paddington is much more charming and fun than expected. Based on the beloved literary character, the film involves a talking bear cub who leaves his South American home in search of the British explorer who befriended his aunt and uncle years before. Without much of a guide, he ends up at Paddington Station in London and meets a family willing to take him in temporarily. Like Winnie the Pooh, Paddington works because it doesn’t reach into the new trend of children’s films that have become increasingly loud and broad. It is a pretty simple movie, with a bit of action, but mostly laid back and warm. Ben Whishaw is a perfect voice for the curious bear, while live-action actors Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins are as wonderful as ever. Even if you don’t have kids yourself, Paddington is worth a look.

Other titles new to VOD this week:
Adult Beginners (Ross Katz, 2004)
The Boy Next Door (Rob Cohen, 2015)
The Gambler (Rupert Wyatt, 2014)
Ride (Helen Hunt, 2014)

Bluebird is a quiet, understated film from first time filmmaker Lance Edmands on the ripple-effect tragedy projects on an isolated town. Mother nature plays a vital part in the film, demonstrating her unforgiving ways extend even to the most remote and silent areas. The film is a straightforward yet honest look at how people deal with their own morality, and by treating the characters as humans instead of criminals, Edmands allows for contemplative evaluation in unexpected areas.

Winter time in Maine can be very cold, but a small logging town experiences a different kind of chill when tragedy strikes. On one particularly cold morning, Lesley (Amy Morton) notices a small bluebird fly inside the school bus she drives during her routine end-of-day cleaning. She pauses only for a moment, staring at the out-of-place bird, distracting her attention away from her duties. The next morning she realizes the severity of this distraction. As she opens the bus doors to begin her day, Lesley notices a lifeless kid near the back she failed to notice the day before. Turns out that the boy went into hypothermic shock and now remains in a coma after spending the night passed out on the frigid bus.

But is Lesley solely to blame for this misfortune? Sure, she neglected her job-related responsibilities in an honest oversight. But what about the child’s parent? After all, no calls were made about a missing boy into the school or the local police. That’s because Marla (Louisa Krause), the boy’s single parent, spends more time out partying than attending to her child, and she completely forgot about picking him up. To make the situation even sadder, Marla seems largely unaffected, feeling only a fraction of the guilt Lesley does. When Marla weeps it seems to be only because she feels guilty about not feeling enough guilt, and perhaps realizes for the first time that she doesn’t make a good parent.

Thankfully, Bluebird isn’t concerned with which character deserves the most blame. Both Lesley and Marla are equally at fault; one legally and one morally, there are no true villains in this story. Instead, the film is more about how characters deal with the aftermath of the accident. Morton’s constant state of regret makes it easy to feel sorry for her character, especially during moments when she can no longer contain her emotions. But Morton never over-dramatizes the grief her character experiences, which is difficult when the character spends the entire film in an overwhelming state of mental suffering. Krause didn’t have the luxury of playing the favorable character, but her sympathetic performance demonstrates just enough humanity to not completely condemn her. Some of the supporting characters, such as Lesley’s daughter (Emily Meade) and husband (John Slattery), don’t quite make the impact they should have, even as side characters, given the objective of exploring how one event affects multiple lives. Minor script issues aside, their performances were also commendable.

Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Tiny Furniture) captures the dreary landscapes of a desolate town on grainy 35mm film stock. Falling snow and cold breaths depict the winter season outside, while a blue-ish tint and muted aesthetics imply the coldness characters feel on the inside. These awe-inspiring visuals pair well with the moody script to create a chilling atmosphere.

Small town tragedy stories like this have been done many times before, most recently in Little Accidents, but they’re often paired with a heavy-handed lesson or the pursuit of justice through finger-pointing. Bluebird wisely side-steps these tropes by not telling us how to feel about the situation, nor forces us to choose sides. The film also expresses the underlying theme of isolation: the lone bluebird, an abandoned child, a small community surrounded by mountains, and a single parent. Edmands finds the right balance between atmospheric undertones and understated storytelling, managing to get solid performances from his cast—it’s easy to forget we’re watching the work of a first-time director.

Hide Your Smiling Faces

Set in a beautifully photographed forested town in the rural North East, Hide Your Smiling Faces by Daniel Patrick Carbone is a moving, richly atmospheric coming-of-age film in the vein of Terrence Malick. It centers on two young brothers who, following the death of a friend, are forced to come to terms with the bitter taste of mortality, both in their own way. It’s a hauntingly accurate depiction of the dark side of boyhood and puberty. The boys wrestle with overwhelming emotions they don’t have the faculty to contain, and they wrestle with each other as well, literally, in their lush, deep green surroundings. Carbone and DP Nick Bentgen capture the landscape in amazingly composed, majestic shots that serve as the perfect framing for the boys’ bubbling emotions. Performances are good across the board, though the young actors feel more naturalistic and raw than the seasoned adults, whose polished skills feel less appropriate to the material. Highly recommended.

Bluebird

When Lesley (Amy Morton), a good-natured school bus driver, is distracted by a pretty bluebird perched inside her bus, she fails to discover a young boy hiding in a back seat during a routine end-of-the-day check-up. The boy goes into hypothermic shock when he’s left in the freezing cold overnight. Set in a frigid industrial town in Maine, Bluebird follows the families of both the boy and the bus driver as they’re stricken with guilt, grief, and inner turmoil. Morton and Louisa Krause (who plays the boy’s mother) are fantastic, and the supporting cast (including John Slattery, Margo Martindale, Emily Meade, and Louisa Krause) back them up solidly, despite their characters feeling like quickly-sketched small town stereotypes. Despite the horrifying nature of the incident at the center of the drama, the film lacks a sense of urgency or intensity, making it feel emotionally distant. Director-writer Lance Edmands shows promise, however, even though his potential isn’t fully realized here.

Rezeta

Following a free-spirited, 21-year-old Albanian fashion model whose jet-setting lifestyle has brought her to Mexico City, Rezeta is a somewhat messy, but peculiarly charming indie romance film starring talented non-actors. While at first Rezeta (Rezeta Veliu) has fun in her new environment, sleeping around with various handsome men, her romantic side begins to yearn for a more stable relationship. She finds this in a tatted-up punk rocker named Alex (Roger Mendoza), whose shy, bad boy personality draws her in. Rezeta’s flirtatious tendencies begin to form cracks in their relationship, and Alex eventually reaches a breaking point, though Rezeta won’t let him slip away without a fight. Director-writer Fernando Frias has an ear for naturalistic dialog, and he pulls good performances out of his actors. He makes Mexico City look as colorful and vibrant as Rezeta’s personality.

Congratulations!

Writer-director Mike Brune’s nutty missing-person drama Congratulations! will appeal to those who enjoy films about the stranger side of suburbia, like Blue Velvet or Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong, which played at Indiefest last year. When an 8-year-old boy named Paul mysteriously disappears during a house party, Mr. and Mrs. Gray (Robert Longstreet and Rhoda Griffis) are left frozen in a state of utter confusion. To the rescue comes Detective Dan Skok (John Curran), who believes that there is “no such thing as a missing person; only missing information”. All evidence points to Paul still being somewhere in the Gray family home, so Dan takes up residence, incessantly searching for clues, driven by the nagging memory of a similar case. As everyone’s mind begins to unwind, their behavior, including Skok’s, grows more bizarre by the minute. Brune conjures some deliciously weird shots (the image of the entire house covered in missing person posters is unforgettable), and the film’s pacing is spot-on. The cast is constantly, constantly deadpanning, which is hilarious at times, grating at others.